Sarah Silverman on Changing Her Comedic Identity and How the Real Housewives Inspire Her Deepest, Darkest Material

In the eight years since Sarah Silverman’s last comedy special, the sweetly raunchy comedienne has co-created and starred on a self-titled Comedy Central series, written a memoir, won an Emmy (for original music, for the “I’m F**ing Matt Damon” song onJimmy Kimmel Live!), proven that she can act dramatically (in The Last Waltz), and merged comedy and politics in a series of hilarious online PSAs. Up next, the New Hampshire-born multi-hyphenate debuts an HBO stand-up special, We Are Miracles*, on November 23. In it, Silverman returns to her R-rated wheelhouse—topics include porn, rape, and oral sex—but this time she has a new persona. She spoke to The Hollywood Blog about crafting jokes on Twitter, her hope for Hillary Clinton, and why reality television is so depressingly ridiculous.

Julie Miller: How did you feel about being dragged into Kanye West’s Twitter rant against Jimmy Kimmel last month? Are you going to use his endorsement of you being “a thousand times funnier” than Jimmy Kimmel on the back of your next book?

Sarah Silverman: I mean. . . no disrespect to either of them. It was a compliment that was a little tainted by the fact that it was made to hurt Jimmy, pretty much exclusively. It wasn’t like it was a reviewer saying that I was funnier. . . not that that would be any better. We don’t need to be compared. It was funny though and I’m glad they worked it out.

Moving on to the special, how long have you been accumulating material for this?

It’s been a long time coming. I get frustrated because I can hone a joke forever and there are some things in that special that I think I have figured out better [since filming it] but I just have to let it go. After my first special, Jesus is Magic, I feel like I had a little bit of an identity crisis for a little while because you want to give the audience what they want. And what they want after seeing that special is to be shocked and be surprised. If you give them what they expect, and they expect to be surprised, they cancel each other out.

How did you get past that?

I had to really learn that comedy dies in the second-guessing. So I really started over with [my material]. I had to just eat shit and bomb and do [material] I think I am interested in talking about now. And not feel like I am beholden to one thing. So I feel like this special just reflects where I am now, which is what comedy should be. I think?

Do you mean you started over with your jokes, or are you talking about the overall tone of your material? Were you consciously trying to advance to a next act in your career?

No. For better or for worse, I absolutely do not think pragmatically about stand-up or my comedy. That’s gross to me and I would never have that impulse. It’s always what interests me now and what makes me laugh, and trying that out. After I did Jesus Is Magic, I really loved that arrogant ignorance. The ignoramous who is being arrogant. I brought that into my series,The Sarah Silverman Program. But the stuff I was writing just wasn’t that anymore. So you might disappoint people who want what’s familiar to them. But I’m older now. Listen, I still dress like an idiot but I can’t be in my 40s in pigtails—as much as I want to be.

Is there one joke in this new act that you were always most excited to get to onstage? One that you know will kill with the audience?

No, there were sections that were more labor intensive. And there were other sections that were just more fun to do. Like, easy one-liners that just made me laugh. I guess the ta-da line. [Silverman jokes that the only way you can gracefully recover from vomiting after giving oral sex is if you say “ta-da!” immediately after, pretending like it was a magic trick.]

When writing a joke like that, what is the thought process for you? How do you even get to that scenario in your head?

I have no idea. A lot of times, I use Twitter to write jokes. And I really like it for that. Some things have to be a tweet, and they don’t really expand well. But some I can make into something bigger. That was just probably like a stoned late-night tweet that tickled me. I watch all of this crap on TV. . . I swear, like theReal Housewives probably inspire the deepest of what I can offer for material. It’s such a modern tragedy in so many ways.

It’s existentially depressing and yet addictive.

It is fascinating. These are grown women who are behaving badly because, I think, they are getting direct approval and love for their behavior from these unseen producers. They are rewarded for bad behavior. And even though they are grown ups, there is this inner child that responds to that. It’s so like the kid behaving badly for attention, even if it is negative attention. Ahh. It’s amazing.

Which casts do you hate-watch the most?

I tend to watch New York and Beverly Hills. But I am no stranger to an Orange County or an Atlanta [episode].

I love that your darkest inspiration in comedy comes from the Real Housewives.

Definitely. Or like The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. It’s so fake but it’s also like there are real people out there who think they’ve fallen in love with someone after an accumulation of eight minutes. “He took me to a castle!” No, producers procured a castle. You’re wearing a prom dress from JC Penney. And you’re competing against 25 other girls for a stranger’s love. What part of this is not crazy? And they’ve got all of that hokey language like “journey.” It’s amazing.

Switching subjects, you recently told Maureen Dowd that you think Hillary Clinton should take a voice class. I had never thought about it, but that kind of makes perfect sense.

Don’t you feel like that?! I think she’s great. I love her. I just don’t want to see her not succeed because of a dumb thing that is a totally superficial thing. You’re triggered by the sound of her voice—it sounds like a mom yelling and the content gets lost. I think she is great. I am just very affected by visceral sounds and colors.

In what other ways?

My friend was just laughing at me because I love the Christmas color palette. I just love red and green so much. I don’t have Christmas but I love the smell of Christmas. I have this pine-scented candle and my whole apartment smells like it. What does that have to do with Hillary Clinton? Nothing. Except that I react by visceral things.

So are you one of those people who walks into a Target in August and is not totally repulsed by the premature holiday decorations?

No, I still wish I could take a pill and sleep through the whole season. I do love the smell and color palette though. It’s funny you mention Target because I have this red and green blanket that I got for like $15 there, and I bought like three of them. Maybe it reminds me of New Hampshire? It feels like a camping blanket. And my boyfriend laughs at me because every night it is on my bedspread and I’m like, ‘It’s so pretty!’ [Laughs] Did you know that this interview would be this fascinating?